The sickest joke of Halloween and Christmas is price of the merchandise...

AS if parents hadn’t enough demands on their money, (and sanity), major department stores have been flogging Halloween merchandise since late summer, as well as Christmas decorations months before the festive season.

What is this collective lunacy that makes people feel pressurised that they’re not doing enough for their kids unless they’re shopping for Halloween outfits and girding their loins before the big splash in December?

And whatever happened to disguising oneself in a sheet with a witch’s hat to go trick-or-treating? Now, there are dresses with sequins and purple tulle for babies of one year old. You’d want to be a sucker for unbridled commercialism to go that route.

But there must be a market for kiddies’ Halloween outfits. Or is it a case of trying to create yet another excuse to go shopping, adding to the tat quotient in one’s house?

In my day, we just wore a plastic mask (sometimes still donning school uniforms) and instead of uttering ‘trick-or-treat,’ we knocked on doors and asked ‘anything for Halloween?’

Expectations were low, although we were unforgiving if a farthing was slipped into our grubby paws. 

A farthing was a quarter of a penny in old money. Not even the price of a bit of chewing gum.

Lollipops were acceptable. And stretchy toffee bars. Coins were sometimes proffered and the loot would be counted at the end of the begging session, to see how much we had to spend at the local sweet shop.

Now, a department store is flogging Spiderman suits for boys and ‘Halloween Face Paint Sets’ that include a little tube of a substance described as blood. For the lips, no doubt.

Whatever happened to raiding one’s mother’s cosmetics?

It seems that today’s child never does arts and crafts as a hobby, which just might result in having home-made gear for every occasion. They’d rather pester their weary mothers and fathers for full length dresses with skull and bone prints, costing €20. Do they not know how to sew?

Granted, not many people make-and-do these days. But constantly shopping for every occasion (including Hallmark and ancient Celtic) is ultimately leading to more landfill.

It’s wasteful and it is turning children into ferocious consumers who will never be sated.

RTÉ broadcaster, Katie Hannon, was on the radio last week talking about barmbracks. Listeners to the Liveline bemoaned the absence of the ring in some of these fruit cakes.

Remember the little bit of fun you could have with a barmbrack years ago? If you got the ring, you’d be wed within the year. (I got a ring in my barmbrack last week but seeing as I was the only one eating it, it hardly counts.)

I suppose health and safety is behind the absence of various objects that were traditionally baked into the cake and signified your future.

If you got the pea, you wouldn’t marry within the year. If you got the stick (a bit of matchstick), it foretold an unhappy marriage. A bit of cloth meant you’d have bad luck or be poor. The coveted coin meant you’d have good fortune.

Only the ring seems to have survived in most shop-bought barmbracks today.

No sooner will the mock pumpkins be taken off the shelves, than the Christmas merchandise will be prioritised in our citadels of commerce.

Again, in some department stores, the Christmas goods have been on sale since around late August.

Checking it out (for research purposes only), I saw a frosted artificial Christmas tree in one store measuring over seven feet that cost a whopping €360.

I can reveal that pink is going to be a hot colour for baubles and lights this Christmas, if the merchandise in one leading store is anything to go by.

And forget robins. This year, whether it’s out of sentimentality or environmental concern, you can buy vivid white polar bears as Christmas decor; they’re unlikely to become extinct in the shopping frenzy as there are loads of them, complete with cute cubs.

It seems the marketing departments have thought of everything. (There are penguins and puffins too.)

You really wouldn’t fancy going shopping for this winter’s festivities if you’re a parent on social welfare.

Maybe you should boycott the crass commercialisation of Halloween and Christmas. 

Unfortunately though, that would be met with disgust from your children.

But seriously, why not make decorations out of household waste like egg cartons and cylindrical toilet rolls?

Get kids young enough to enthuse about such activities and you just might engender a bit of imagination – and give the boot to purveyors of tack.

It was only in the 2000s that saying ‘trick-or-treat’ became common in Ireland. It’s safe to say the term is American, capital country of excess.

Could we please cut down on the waste and resurrect old and free traditions?